


The Wriggler's Preacher

by arcaladiwoompa



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Ancestors, Bulges and Nooks, Drone Season, Egg Laying, F/M, Forced Pregnancy, Gangbang, Hermaphroditic Trolls, Light Bondage, M/M, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Multi, Multiple Orgasms, Multiple Penetration, Sexual Slavery, Size Difference, Subjuggulators, The Signless is polyamorous, Worldbuilding, Xeno, and more!, brooding cavern, dubcon, egg pregnancy, hot ancestor sex, oviparous mutants, warning for some violence, wrigglers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-01
Updated: 2017-02-26
Packaged: 2018-04-02 07:06:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4050778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arcaladiwoompa/pseuds/arcaladiwoompa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Current status as of July 30, 2017: I have a big chunk of the next chapter written but I'm currently working on a story I haven't posted yet.</p><p>------</p><p>Shortly after your first Drone Season five sweeps ago, you were nowhere remotely close to a brooding cavern when your mother told you out of the blue: “That’s strange, I smell a Mothergrub nearby.”</p><p>Shortly after that, the Mothergrub turned out to be you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sabaku_no_gaara_ai](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sabaku_no_gaara_ai/gifts).



> This fic is a response to this kinkmeme prompt: http://homesmut.dreamwidth.org/40248.html?thread=46770744#cmt46770744
> 
> Sorry it didn't turn out as sad and horrible as the prompt intended. xD;
> 
> Warnings:  
> -No noncon but could definitely be considered dubcon given the circumstances  
> -Some violence with regard to the Sufferer's punishment at the beginning

Shortly after your first Drone Season five sweeps ago, you were nowhere remotely close to a brooding cavern when your mother told you out of the blue: “That’s strange, I smell a Mothergrub nearby.”

Shortly after that, the Mothergrub turned out to be you.

You had already come to terms with your blood mutation long ago, but this? How were you supposed to cope as your body underwent a transformation that no currently living troll had ever seen or heard of? In public, you hid your gradually swelling belly in the folds of your sun cloak while you continued to narrate your dreams to the masses as if nothing had ever happened. In private you leaned heavily on the Ψiioniic for (often inappropriate) levity, your Beloved for emotional support and your mother for advice. You often thanked your lucky stars that they always seemed to know just what to say to get you through another night.

Then on the very first evening of the Laying Season you retreated into the bushes and, with a great deal of painful exertion, brought a clutch of three eggs into the world. Each was leathery and pearlescent, contrasting harshly with the ugly wet puddle of your blood and lubricating fluids that they were sitting in. Their protectively spiked shells slowly hardened and became opaque in contact with the cooler surrounding air.

You agonized over the question of what to do with the eggs. Just seeing the color of them was enough to make you feel hopelessly attached; one olive green and two mustard yellow (of course there would be two). You would have liked to keep them and raise the wrigglers like your mother had raised you, but there were times when you were already struggling to take care of yourselves without them. With a heavy heart you decided that the front line of an exponentially growing revolution is too dangerous for young grubs. Your mother snuck the eggs into a brooding cavern for you and left their fates to a future lusus. To this day you never found out whether any of them survived to pupation.

Overall it was not an experience you cared to repeat. You remember relentless hunger and becoming slower with each passing night. You remember being unable to lie in a pile comfortably no matter how you tossed and turned. You remember your mother wiping the sweat from your brow with a cool damp cloth. You remember being too weak to stand for several days. Ever since then you have been taking pheromone pills to suppress your heat cycle. You’re not taking any chances, so you have forced yourself to spend every subsequent Drone Season miserably fondling your globes while Love and Ψii get their slightly guilty jollies on without you.

This sweep you ran out of pills, just when you could least afford it, just when you’ve become too persecuted to keep even the most basic provisions in stock. After four sweeps of suppression your next heat cycle hit you with all the force of a Subjuggulator’s club, and now as an indirect result you’ve been captured and stripped naked in front of a large gaping crowd of trolls who you’re not sure you can call your followers anymore. On her command, the Condesce’s Executor Darkleer lifts you by your hair, displaying the grotesquely mutated roundness of your body for all to see. He shackles your wrists to a flogging jut behind you at an uncomfortable angle that forces you to either stand on your toes or let the shackles bite into your wrists as they take the bulk of your weight. The crowd, easily numerous enough to overwhelm the Condesce and her entourage, simply mills about and stares as Darkleer lashes you until your sides are crosshatched with violent scarlet.

You are overcome with a sudden flare of anguish and rage. “Is _this_ what I taught you? Have you timid sheepfuckers been listening to a WORD I SAY? I wouldn’t give a maggot-infested sack of shit about dropping dead here in an instant if ONE of you would stop standing there with your thumbs up your waste chutes letting all the hemocastes become scapegoats in front of your eyes on a daily basis, if ONE of you could look me in the eyes and tell me ‘Yes, every precious second of my borrowed life is worth living, even when it’s all gone globes-up’. You frond-twisting bulgefists are RUINING this for me. I can’t _help_ you anymore. Thanks for nothing, doucheboats. I hate and pity each and every one of you, yes _especially_ you Condesce, because if you have to kill somebody to make a point it’s because nobody wanted to listen to you and that just brings tears to my eyes.” It belatedly occurs to you that you’ve used a series of choice words you were supposed to be too classy to acknowledge the existence of aloud. “…My apologies, Mother.”

Having spent your bitterness, you wearily watch the Condesce’s guards as they strip your Beloved and your Mother of their signs and drag them away in chains. Your Love can’t tear her eyes away from you until she is lost from your sight; she looks even more devastated than you feel. As you search the crowd to observe the fate of the Ψiioniic, you are surprised to catch a fleeting glimpse of pity on Darkleer’s face. He quickly hides it before the Empress addresses him directly. She orders him to commission a battleship from the Empire’s finest engineers and see to it that the Ψiioniic is installed as its Helmsman. He bows and takes your best friend’s chain into his hands. The crowd disperses and you are left all alone.

You are abandoned on the flogging jut- still on your toes- for the rest of the night and through two scorching, sleepless sunny days, swaying beneath the metal post like a drunkard. Your legs burn with exhaustion; your wrists are rubbed so raw they bleed; your head swims in a drowsy fog of thirst; your eyes feel like a desert; your black skin is hot and cracked. Then you go into labor, and this time you are absolutely certain it will finish you off. As the first contractions claim your already weakened body, the last scrap of your conscious mind feels regret for your unhatched clutch of eggs, doomed to fall to the ground and split open before they have the slightest chance at life. You take deep breaths and bear down with all the strength you have left. After twelve hours of primal struggling, you produce a single undersized, undernourished blur of olive green and pass out in the blazing sun.

***

There is merciful shade. Someone is holding a glass of cold water to your lips. You guzzle it down so quickly you almost throw up. Everything hurts, and you pass out again.

***

The cool washcloth on your face is soothing and familiar. You instinctively lean into your mother’s touch and slowly crack open your eyes. Holy SHIT there is an Imperial Drone hovering not a hand span from your nose. You scream and try to push it away with your hands, only to find that they have been shackled to the stone wall of the cave you’re lying in. The Imperial Drone croons apologetically at you and withdraws to fetch a fresh cloth. What the fuck, you never imagined a drone could make a sound like that; it’s almost like singing.

“Shoosh your rumble spheres, mutant,” a bored-sounding jade blood drawls at you, staring at his nails. “They think you’re a mother grub because you smell like one. We’ve been ordered to keep you alive so I’m not gonna tell them otherwise.”

“Oh,” you reply dazedly.

When the drone returns, it nudges you onto your side and begins to clean the mess of sun-baked blood from the welts across your back with surprising gentleness. This is too bizarre. None of this behavior fits with your mental image of an Imperial Drone as a ferocious killing machine. They know how to carry buckets of slurry without spilling them of course, but you always thought it was just instinct and they were too unintelligent to actually use tools, let alone show affection. Chirping encouragement, a second drone shreds meat into tiny pieces and begins to feed you like a wriggler. This is stupid and embarrassing. You take a good look around the cave for the first time and notice a mother grub surrounded by hundreds of eggs, a handful of other jade bloods and several other drones that begin to pick their way delicately in your direction as soon as they see you looking at them. Ironically you now have a small army of doting lusii. You would rather have your mother.

You sigh quietly to yourself. Here you are, still alive and chained to the wall of a brooding cavern, which means the Condesce must have decided that your mutation is useful and you can now look forward to living out the rest of your days as an unwilling grub factory. Globes-up indeed. You have no idea who she’ll make you have grubs _with_ next season, but at least next time you can be optimistic about seeing them hatch. You settle in for the long haul and try to recover your strength.

***

Never has your life been as routine as it is in the brooding caverns. The brooding caverns are the origin for all seasons, and the transition between each season seems to come so suddenly. After all the eggs are on the ground, Laying Season can best be described in one word: boring. There is not much for the jade bloods to do; the drones are enough to take care of security and hunt enough food for the mother grubs to regain all the weight they lost to nourishing their eggs. Every night the mother grub makes her very slow shuffling rounds around the caverns and turns over each of her eggs. The season is marked by constant comings and goings and chatter among the drones while many of the jade bloods are in and out of the caverns on vacation or idly gossiping among themselves. At first they are wary of you and tend to exclude you from their conversations, but every once in a while you can convince one of them to make a bit of small talk as long as none of the others are around. Some are harder to approach than others. They flee to the opposite end of the cavern the instant you start getting too long-winded or controversial, and it makes you roll your eyes. Oh, honestly. What do they expect you to do, censor yourself? It’s not like the Empress is going to appear out of the sky and decide to change your punishment for continuing to commit the “crimes” she already knew about when she decided not to let you die.

As soon as the first spiked egg shell begins to wiggle and crack with a series of faint peeping sounds, a much more dramatic season begins. If you had to use one word to describe Hatching Season, it would unfortunately be ‘massacre’. The last to make it out of their shells are the first to be eaten alive by their own hatchmates, and from that instant onward the wrigglers wage war over every scrap the drones and jade bloods bring them. You’ve seen a lot of soul-crushing, sickeningly unjust battles in your time, but none of it was as much of a shock to your core beliefs as this. Weren’t wrigglers supposed to be helpless and innocent? Is violence really this deeply ingrained in the nature of trollkind? Were _you_ this vicious as a grub? How is it possible that you had any naivety left in you after all of the atrocities you have witnessed firsthand?

By the start of Hatching Season you have fully recovered from the aftereffects of your pregnancy. You no longer smell like a mother grub, and the drones begin to ignore you. Resources are scarce, and the jade bloods cull the remaining weaker or mutated wrigglers right away to be able to provide more for the healthy ones. Even with the help of the drones the jade bloods find it difficult to keep up with the demands of all the hungry mouths that have become their responsibility, and they grudge every scrap they have to give to you. You feel guilty that you have to take food from the mouths of wrigglers, and then you feel angry that you have been made to feel that way. You want to tell them, _Stop looking at me like I don’t have the right to exist,_ but you realize this would be exactly the same as telling them to stop doing their jobs. What happened to the rest of your hatchmates when your Mother swaddled you in sun cloth and ran out into the daylight? Your eyes soften, and you look at each of your caretakers in turn. “At some point in our lives we must all live at the expense of others. I wish there was something I could do to make this easier on all of you.”

“Yeah? Well let’s see you put these screeching little shits to sleep.”

“I will do my best.”

“That was _sarcasm_ fuckhead.”

“Shoosh, Ashprong.”

“Don’t you shoosh me, mutant.”

“Perhaps you would like me to put _you_ to sleep as well?”

“Are you _hateflirting_ with me now?”

A little spark of amusement leaps into your eyes. “Does someone need to intervene?”

“Did you _seriously_ just flip through all four quadrants in as many sentences?”

“Ew, my grub loaf is touching my mashed tubers.”

“Ugh! I give up. _You_ deal with the prisoner, Sharpeye.”

“Have you considered the idea that he could have already put the wrigglers to sleep by now if you just shut up instead of taking the bait?”

“Fuck you.”

That exchange would have made Ψii cackle like a hyena, and his absence aches like an old wound. You take a deep breath and start reciting the Best Coon Time Story Ever, Complete With Silly Voices, Yes I Know We Don’t Have A Recuperacoon, So Help Me Kankri At Least Pretend To Be Asleep, Mother Is Tired. You’re not sure if you should be bashful or proud that you’ve memorized every word.

Right away the wrigglers stop fussing and stare at you with huge eyes. Sharpeye raises a grudgingly impressed eyebrow in your direction. You very much enjoy having an audience again. Far too young to grasp the concept of language, the wrigglers are captivated by every word nevertheless, listening to the lilting changes in the rhythm of your voice. They wriggle closer, curling up against your legs and crawling up onto your chest. You hardly dare to move. Fifteen minutes later all the grubs are asleep and you’re pretty sure Ashprong is halfway there himself. Peace reigns over the brooding caverns. You close your eyes and purr yourself to sleep.

***

One evening you wake up to find that all the drones and the mother grub are missing from the cavern. Thus begins the drone breeding season, during which the Empire replenishes their forces. You will not see them again until the return of Drone Season. By now the wrigglers are big enough to go for longer without eating, but the absence of help from the drones still places a heavy burden on the remaining jade bloods. They are often forced to abandon the cavern all at the same time in order to bring back enough to eat and can only hope that the wrigglers are still there when they return. With no one to guard the cavern, sometimes wild beasts wander in uninvited in search of an easy meal. It’s a toss up to see what happens next. Sometimes you have to try to kickbox the shit out of a beast with your hands tied, armed with nothing but the claws on your toes. Sometimes there are casualties among the wrigglers, and sometimes a savage mauling by the sharp horns of an especially strong wriggler or several well aimed blasts of psionics will take down the intruder and turn it into a free meal. The latter occurrence becomes more frequent as the wrigglers begin to learn to work together with their hatchmates. Moments like these restore your faith in trollkind.

They are getting smarter. They begin to learn their first words, and you tell stories even more frequently to encourage them. With the jade bloods frequently gone for most of the night, you can slip in as many illegal sermons as you like and no one will ever know the difference until it’s too late. You sincerely hope that you will be able to impart the next generation with a modicum of kindness before life scatters them across the planet.

***

Finally the jade bloods have a chance to rest. The wrigglers pupate, and everything is quiet and lonely for an entire perigree. You still tell stories to them every day and hope they can hear you through the tough layer of silk. Wriggling Season arrives at the end of Pupa Season, and the brooding cavern is suddenly overwhelmed with childless lusii looking to adopt. The entire cavern empties out over the course of several days. You wave goodbye to each of your charges. You never told them your name. You hope they can keep themselves safe.

***

Someone has filled your nook with lava and your arteries with stinging ants. The wait is killing you. “Yes, I am _well_ aware that there are pheromones oozing from every pore of my body and there are no other trolls in sight.”

The drone will not be reasoned with. It clacks at you disapprovingly and rattles an empty bucket in front of your face.

You _may_ be starting to lose your patience more than the drone is. “Standing there rubbing it in isn’t going to help, you single minded cretin! If you want me to get laid so badly why don’t you go out and fetch someone for me, or better yet, snap off these chains so I can do it myself?”

The drone fluffs up all of its spikes and hisses at you.

“I beg your pardon. Lying here waiting for something to happen is making me testy. I don’t like this any more than you do. It’s starting to become terribly uncomfortable.”

Settling its ruffled spikes back down, the drone finally decides to give up and go bother someone else. It flies out of the cavern with an empty bucket in each hand. Then another drone flies in with filled buckets, waits for the newly returned mother grub to siphon out the slurry with her ovipositor and comes over to harass you, and the same scene repeats itself all over again. Groaning with exasperation, you turn away from it onto your side. What if nobody shows up? What if instead of being used as an auxiliary mother grub, your _real_ punishment is to be left here all alone at the mercy of your heat cycle every sweep? That would definitely be worse.

You begin to revise that statement when Executer Darkleer of all people is the first to show up at your metaphorical doorstep. Your mouth goes dry as you try to read his face through the expressionless lenses covering his eyes. What does he want from you? Is he here on orders to beat you up again? Did you merely imagine the brief flicker of emotion you saw on his face the better part of a sweep ago? Pity is the only self defense you have left against someone of his size. Fortunately you don’t have to fake it. You meant what you said last time; because your love goes beyond the quadrants, you really do find something to pity and something to hate about everyone you meet if you can get to know them for long enough. Already dwarfed by the bulk of his body, you make yourself look even smaller, widen your eyes and exude a mist of pale. “Tell me what’s on your mind?”

Darkleer takes off his helmet and looks awkward. He won’t meet your eyes. “I am expected to- how shall I put this- sire a grub with you. Just between the two of us, I am not exactly comfortable with the idea.”

Releasing a hint of pitch, you raise the corner of your lips to show a flash of teeth. “Because I’m a mutant?”

“No.” A blue flush appears across Darkleer’s cheeks. “Her Imperious Condescension intends to use me as a tool of intimidation and destruction. Lately my role has pinched like an ill-fitting shoe.”

It makes you happy to hear that. “You don’t have to destroy me to give the lady what she wants.” You are full on flushed now with a cheeky glint in your eyes. “Unless you want to.”

Something between a snort and a choking sound escapes from Darkleer’s throat. He tugs at his collar looking terribly flustered.

When he still hasn’t moved any closer, you add: “I forgive you, you know. _Please_ come over here and help yourself before I spontaneously combust. The drones have been giving me dirty looks all night.”

“I… yes. If it’s alright with you.” You haven’t had a stitch of clothing on for perigrees and he’s so _bashful_ he tries to hide in a crevice he doesn’t really fit in to strip out of his cape and flight suit. You want to kiss him. You want to find out where his ears are hiding in that long straight curtain of hair and give each of them an affectionate nibble, but all you can see and reach when he positions himself over you is the thick square wall of his chest. Close enough, who even cares. You arch your hips up and eagerly grind your globes into his. Darkleer gasps and grinds down on you _hard_. God yes, you really needed this. Closing your eyes, you tip your head back and unsheathe with a soft sigh of relief.

He’s so much taller than you, you have absolutely no hope of reaching his gene bladder. Instead you work the ridges of your bulge against the outside of his seed flap and the sensitive underside of his sheath. _Come on, let’s see what you’re packing. Ah, there we go._ To nobody’s surprise, he is hung like a hoofbeast. Darkleer’s bulge is shaped like his horns, a long tapering tendril with an arrowhead at the point. You need him in your nook _yesterday_. You coil around him, stroke up as far as you can reach and pull him down toward your seed flap.

Darkleer furrows his eyebrows. “Are you sure you want to-”

“ _Yes._ ” You give a firm tug and wedge his arrowhead into your seed flap with your bulge. Your nook clenches greedily and slobbers cherry red lubricating fluid all over him.

“ _Oh._ ” Darkleer pulls back out of you with a shudder; the arrowhead of his bulge feels even better as it catches against the muscles of your seed flap on the way out. You cry out with pleasure and pull him back in. He gets the hint quickly; when he builds up a rhythm of shallow thrusts in and out of your seed flap you are absolutely drowning in the sensation. The more you loosen up, the deeper he plunges in, meeting delicious resistance from your nook ridges in both directions. Once he is in deep enough that you can reach his nook again you begin to return the favor, working the ridges of your bulge in and out of his seed flap with considerably more thrashing than he needs to do to make his presence felt.

Darkleer’s arrowhead darts through the sphincter of your gene bladder. You thrash against your chains and _scream_. You work the length of his bulge over with the ridges of your nook, sucking at him with insistent rolling waves. He moans, pushing in to the hilt for more. His globes are flush with yours again. Your pleasure spikes so sharply with each subsequent thrust that you’re surprised when Darkleer comes first. Thick streams of blue dribble out of his nook; he floods your gene bladder with genetic material until your abdomen is tightly swollen with it and you’re gone. You spurt red from your bulge and nook; Darkleer’s nook clenches around you and draws your genetic material upward. Your own release forces your gene bladder to stretch even farther, and every contraction as it mixes your slurry makes you feel like you’re about to burst.

Another drone rattles a bucket at each of you, or maybe it’s one of the same ones from before. You haven’t exactly been trying to keep track. “Darkleer please,” you nudge at him urgently until he takes your bucket and helps you nudge it into place after you roll over onto your stomach and get up on your knees, a feat that would have impossible for you to achieve alone without being able to freely use your arms. You both let yourselves go at the same time, filling the hollow cavern with the obscene slosh of slurry on metal. Deep in the porous pockets of your gene bladder that are supposed to be vestigial a trace of your combined slurry is left behind. It will grow into at least one of your eggs this season. You wonder if any of your brood’s siblings will also hatch from the mother grub. Only time will tell.

You settle onto your back again. You smile at Darkleer and you purr. “Thank you.”

“Do you think I could come back and visit you some time?”

“Of course. If you don’t want any jade bloods or drones sticking their sniff nodes into your business, drone breeding season is the best time to drop by.”

“I will keep that in mind.”

***

By the following evening the drones find your pheromones terribly confusing. You smell like a mother grub and a troll in heat at the same time. They bring you food and water and empty buckets, and sometimes they get it wrong and bring you full buckets, which makes the real mother grub huff in complaint. You think it’s pretty funny, and then the Grand Highblood himself steps haughtily into the cavern and assassinates your laugh.

He is eerily silent; there is no need for him to speak when a casually swinging bloodstained subjuggulator’s club can do all the talking for him. He swaggers like he owns the place, like he owns _you_. A slow, dangerous grin spreads across his face. You think of a cat toying with a mouse. This could go very badly, and yet your nook is already slick for a second round. You tilt your chin up in defiance and meet his gaze as an equal.

His grin widens and he finally deigns to speak. “What makes a filthy motherfucking criminal get his laugh on when he should be repenting for his sins?”

“The fact that I’m not the one asking _you_ that question.”

The Grand Highblood honks out a hearty laugh. “I almost up and forgot all about the heretical mouth you have, mutant. Best worst motherfucking thing about you.” He stands over you and prods your jaw with the butt end of his club. “What’s say we put that vulgar face gash to good use?”

Your nook likes the sound of that idea. You lick your lips and fix a smoldering gaze on him as he impatiently strips out of his clothing and tosses it aside. He grabs hold of your horns like handles to pin your head to the ground, straddles you and slides forward until his nook is right in your face. You start licking in every direction he steers you from the soft folds of his seed flap to the sensitive underside of his bone shield. When he tilts your head to grant access to his left globe you bracket it with your teeth and suck on the entire round swelling. He growls in appreciation and rubs rough strokes up and down the length of your horns. Mmm, you’re getting off on how much he’s getting off on this. He yanks you by the horns to repeat the same procedure on his right globe. You give him a good suck then drag your teeth across the surface, smirking as the pitch of his growl rises into a trill. His grip around your horns tightens, but he makes no move to oppose you as you nuzzle your way back to his seed flap and dip your tongue inside. You flick upward and feel it catch on a little nub on the wall of his nook. What a convenient target. You are all over that nub, swirling it around with your tongue.

The Grand Highblood unsheathes with an uncontrolled moan, revealing a bulge that looks a lot like a more flexible version of his spiked subjuggulator’s club. Enough is evidently enough; he feels the need to remind you who is in charge in this cavern. Sedately licking indigo from your lips, you lay back and let him manhandle you onto your stomach. You rest your head on your forearms as he props your rear end up over your knees. This is going to be more intense than Darkleer and his massive bulge, you can already feel it. Adrenaline coils in your gut and your nook throbs in anticipation.

Completely out of the blue, he _spanks_ you once with an open handed slap. Your eyes fly open wide, and before you can decide how to respond he is already thrusting all the way to the lower edge of your gene bladder and back, his spikes digging into all of your ridges. “Ow!” Too rough, that _hurts_! “Ow.” No, it aches. “Oh… _Oh_.” No, it feels _good_. You unsheathe and rock back against him. “Oh _yes_.” It feels _amazing_. “Yes, yes!”

“You greedy nookslut,” the Grand Highblood grunts with something like affection, right before he drives his bulge straight up into your gene bladder. He rasps his spikes back and forth over the sphincter until you see white. Slick, sticky red spurts all over you from your abdomen to your thorax, dripping down toward your chin. The Grand Highblood pulls away to turn you over onto your back, watching with satisfaction as you lay panting in a puddle of your own fluids. Lifting you by the hips, he shoves into you to the globes one last time. You shudder through an aftershock as he fills you to the brim with slurry. When he is finished, he slips out of you with a wet slurp, crouches over you and releases the rest of his slurry from his nook onto your abdomen. Lovely. You need an ablution and you really, _really_ need a bucket. The Grand Highblood gathers up his clothing and almost walks away just like that; he decides to stick around for just a bit longer when you have to beg the drones to bring you a bucket and _help_ , they don’t _understand_ , and most of your combined slurry ends up all over the floor regardless. He laughs at you and snaps a photograph with his ridiculously tiny cell phone on his way out of the cavern.

You shout after him, flushed scarlet to the tips of your ears. “I regret nothing!”

He casually flips you off without looking back, and he is gone.

Well, that was hot.

The mother grub slowly shuffling over to vacuum the slurry off of you? Not so much.

***

During the remainder of Drone Season you are visited by a handful of other high ranking soldiers, none of them a shade lower than teal. They come to you with the intent to inflict violence, but when you inevitably welcome them with (metaphorically) open arms, genuine love and a cloying stew of pheromones, they come away liking you without stopping to question it until they are well away from the cavern. Have you finally found a way to reach an audience of high bloods? If this keeps up you’re going to have to start to practice at preaching and having sex at the same time, or at least dropping a few subliminal messages… okay no, you’re snickering at the very idea. You wouldn’t be able to keep a straight face and you probably wouldn’t be able to concentrate on what you’re saying anyway. You can hope that some of your visitors decide to stay with you a bit longer or come back at another time in the sweep.


	2. Chapter 2

_Everything around you is shimmering in honey gold from floor to ceiling, especially the light pouring in through your arched window. You can’t imagine why you’ve opened your eyes when it’s still clearly so bright outside yet here you are, stubbornly awake and blinking. Why aren’t you even squinting? The last time you checked you didn’t have any sort of jade blood-esque mutation that makes you immune to the sun. Maybe you should try to shut the curtains and go back to sleep._

_You extricate yourself from your light, cozy blanket and swing your legs over the side of your- wait a minute, this isn’t a recuperacoon. This is some kind of squishy rectangular surface. It’s certainly comfortable but you think it would be better suited for pale cuddling than for sleeping. Not that you’re complaining. This is far superior to sleeping on the floor._

_You get distracted on the way to the window as you take notice of the vaguely embarrassing clothing on your body. This ridiculous outfit appears to be some kind of pale lingerie, and there isn’t a single stitch of your red anywhere on it. Instead the yellow goes on forever, broken only by a scarce smattering of white accents. On your chest where no sign has any business taking up real estate, an embroidered crescent moon stands out in a slightly darker shade of gold. Your shirt and pants must be spun from sinfully expensive fabric, silky, soft and light as air. Peering down at your toes, you find that they have completely disappeared into a fuzzy pair of silver slippers. Nobody could possibly take you seriously in this silly costume. You stride over to the chest of drawers opposite your sleeping platform and find them disappointingly empty._

_Speaking of nobody, you have yet to come across a single soul. You finally peer out the window. For all that it leaves you with more questions than answers, the skyline of the golden city below you is nothing short of breathtaking. Far above the towering spires, each small passing cloud coalesces into a window on a different scene._

_You **know** these clouds. The eight sweep old near-adult version of you from a different time and place features prominently in them. You remember being him and watching him, or sometimes both at once. You’ve seen him countless times before in that red knitted turtleneck and wearing that condescending expression like he knows better than everyone and cannot be convinced otherwise. Not for the first time you feel acutely embarrassed by the endless diatribe falling out of his face gash. Will you grow up already? You want to pinch him by the ears and shake him until he gets it into his thick think pan that he can’t have a meaningful discussion without **listening**. It’s amazing that his friends put up with his obnoxiousness at all. _

_Celibacy? Bullshit. You’re were just crippled by insecurity about every conflicting non-quadrant leaning feeling you’ve had about anyone ever and the fact that deep down you knew nobody likes you. You could go on at length about nonsense that’s actually damaging but god forbid you actually express your feelings lest they offend somebody. Wait until the aftermath of your first Drone Season; then you’ll have a **real** reason to be celibate. In your past life you never made it that far. You’re thankful for that for his sake. _

_Porrim didn’t have to knit that sweater for you. She wasn’t your mother back then- you were the same age- but deep down she still cared about you a lot, fussed over you, tried to set you right even though you inevitably refuted all of her arguments. You loved that sweater. You wore it over your leggings every day even when you weren’t cold. It was gift for your seventh wriggling day and when she gave it to you, it was one of the few times you were ever stunned speechless. You wish you had the sense to listen to her more, take her more seriously, show some gratitude._

_A bloom of candy red in another cloud catches your eye. Oh god, that’s you languishing on the flogging jut, not quite current you but so close that it **hurts** to look at. You want to tear your eyes away but you can’t. The irons are scorching your wrists raw and there’s an arrow sticking out of your abdomen- incongruously flat. Is this what would have happened if you hadn’t been carrying eggs? You’re not supposed to be here. You were supposed to die. In the adjacent cloud your Beloved clutches at the tattered, bloodied remains of your leggings and barely escapes execution herself. She keeps painting murals of you on the walls long after you are dead, until her curly hair goes brittle. She dies of old age and the last rough image remains unfinished. _

_There are so many more clouds bearing images you haven’t seen before, waiting for you, hanging in the sky with a sense of dispassionate inevitability._

You wake up in a cold sweat, curled up on your side and shaking. If only you could voice your fears aloud to Meulin’s attentive ears. You need a hug. Your misshapen body is disgusting, and you need her to argue that you are beautiful in the face of evidence to the contrary. You need her claw tips smoothing back the hair from your forehead, the reassurance of her fingertips smoothly gliding over your cheeks. Or barring that, at least the squishy rectangle from your dream would be nice. 

Who is awake right now? Broad daylight; it’s Sharpeye’s shift but she must be out hunting or culling zombies because she’s nowhere in your line of sight. In a way it’s a relief; no one will hassle you if you decide to indulge in a little cry. Then you realize that a huddle of five approaching drones have noticed that you are awake and are clicking at you expectantly. “Excuse me. I don’t mean to impose-” It still feels strange talking to them, especially when they only listen for one season in a sweep. “I’m cold, can I have a snuggle plane?” 

They put their heads together, chirping, as if processing your request. They disperse, and after a few minutes one of them comes back with a fuzzy drying plane, large but still only enough to awkwardly drape over you from your shoulders to your knees. Well, it’s something. “Thank you.” You probably won’t be allowed to keep it once the jades notice. 

***

This is technically only your first, and Laying Season is already your least favorite time of the sweep. The Mother Grub calls the drones to her with low, urgent thrumming, thickening the air with sharp pheromones that set your teeth on edge. By contrast, you are gripped by the instinct to call as little attention to yourself as possible, pressing yourself into the inadequate shelter of the wall you have been shackled to as if hoping to burrow through solid rock. You curl in on yourself and hold your breath against each painful cramp that rolls its way down the muscles of your abdomen. You release each breath slowly, barely daring to make a sound. For a few precious moments you allow yourself to relax fully. Then you have to brace yourself for the next wave and the cycle starts all over again, slowly, inexorably quickening in tempo. In your head you try to tell yourself that at least you aren’t already exhausted, half starved and suffering from heat stroke before you’ve even started. It doesn’t help. 

Before long your instincts overtake your think pan completely in a sort of feral highblood rage. You have long since stopped questioning what your mutant body is capable of doing. You welcome the easy slide into a hot, dark, blood-misted haze. It comes as such a relief not to have to _think_ anymore. The pain has not lessened in the slightest but there is no need to dwell on it. You exist neither in the future nor in the past. You are laser-sharp focus. You are adrenaline and an unexpected burst of strength. 

Then a Jadeblood makes the mistake of coming to check on you. 

_Get away, get away, anger, fear, **cornered** -snarling, snapping teeth, claws- how **dare** you- your mutation your blood your precious **children** \- can’t see me like this- I swear if you come any closer I will personally bludgeon your skull open with my horns-_

“Whoa holy shit what the fuck!?!? Mister Non-Violence here just bit my fucking hand!” 

“Ahahaha serves you right.” 

“Somebody pap this guy!” 

“ _You_ pap him.” 

“No _you_ do it.” 

“Fuck off, I’m not his moirail.” 

“Leave him the fuck alone, he doesn’t need to be papped.” 

***

Many hours later everything comes back into focus like somebody flipped a switch inside you. You don’t know how long you’ve been lying here like this, but you are _exhausted_ well beyond the point of being able to hold your weight upright. You still haven’t caught your breath. Your whole body aches. You feel distinctly _empty_. Then you notice that your body is loosely curled around seven healthy eggs. Slowly, delicately, you scoop them all up into the circle of your arms, shackles be damned. A proud little smile creeps onto your face. 

Ashprong stomps right up to you and bends down to jab an accusing finger right into your face. “You **bit** me!” 

You blink up at him, wide eyes flicking between his face and the bandages on his hand. The penny drops, but it has to fall through honey on the way down. “Oh… I… think I remember doing that.” You yawn, blinking heavily several times in a row. 

“Really? Is that all you have to say for yourself?” 

“Well excuse me for not presenting you with an engraved plaque and a bouquet of flowers. What _exactly_ would you like me to say after laying seven eggs, Ashprong?” 

“That’s nothing, our Mother Grub just laid fifty times more with none of the drama.” 

“Have you considered that she is also twenty times my size? Kindly take a long walk off of a short cliff, please and thank you.” 

Ashprong is still sputtering when you fall asleep. 

***

These eggs are _yours_. Their translucent colors are the very first thing you see when you wake up. Nobody has taken them away. You haven’t accidentally rolled over and crushed them in your sleep. The small blessing of their continued existence fills you with wonder, gratitude and terror in equal parts. You fervently, selfishly, desperately want them to survive. Last sweep’s carnage keeps replaying itself in your head. What if they are culled for being too weak? Worse, what if they are every bit as savage as last sweep’s grubs and they tear their hatchmates apart? The very idea makes you vaguely ill. 

The only way to control your anxiety is to exercise what little control you have over the situation. You’re bloody well going to rear these eggs to hatching even if you have to fastidiously copy every movement the Mother Grub makes. Are your eggs too cold? Too warm? Have you turned them over often enough? Are they getting enough air? 

You talk to them a lot. You ask them how they are doing every night even though you know it will take the better part of a sweep before they can answer. You tell them you love them. Sometimes you hum a little tune or tell them one of the stories that last sweep’s hatchlings seemed to like the best. You are aware that our excessive fussing probably makes you look stupid, but every time you lift up an egg to the light and watch the tiny moving shadows growing inside, any lingering self-consciousness is abolished by the warm little glow that settles in the pit of your stomach. 

***

Sometimes the faintest sound can set you on alert, enough to rouse you from a deep sleep. There it is again, that muffled cheeping. You haven’t registered the reason why yet, but you are compelled to give an answering chirp. Then the caverns explode into a high pitched cacophony and you find yourself crooning “It’s okay, I’m here” before you’re even fully awake. _Oh_ , the eggs are hatching. _Your_ eggs are hatching. You need to bear witness to the birth of your offspring, dreading that they may only exist on this planet for a fleeting moment before their lives are extinguished. Laying on your back, you scoot toward the wall until your horns graze rock. You’ve gradually been allowed enough slack in your chains for good behavior that if you raise your arms above your head here, your chains now allow you to roll onto your side, then awkwardly onto your stomach. You scoot back to give yourself as much room as you can away from the wall, lying with your upper body propped up on your chained wrists and your elbows. 

You line your seven eggs up in a row in front of your face and stare, transfixed by their minute movements. Sharpeye doesn’t need to remind you that you’re not allowed to help; if they can’t even hatch from their own eggs they won’t have a remote chance of surviving all the other hardships that lie ahead. You chirp encouragement again. The Mother Grub’s chirp is much deeper, a rumble that resonates all the way into your bones. _Come to me, my children._ She makes you feel so safe. 

With the exception of one, your eggs wobble from side to side out of sync, pause, dent outward slightly near the top, pause again and repeat. Cracks begin to form and widen. The seventh egg – Darkleer’s blue – rocks so violently it nearly rolls away. His grub’s arrow tipped horn punches right through the shell on the first try. He appears to get stuck there for a moment, but after a few minutes of wriggling his opposite horn punches through on the other side, the shell splits in between them and his whole head pushes outwards, cheeping in protest. The grub has the same straight hair too. You couldn’t have imagined Darkleer ever being so tiny if you didn’t see this grub that looks so much like him with your own eyes. 

You smile. “Hello and welcome.” One hooked grub claw follows, then the other, and Darkleer’s grub – possibly his Descendant - wriggles his body halfway out of his shell. He pauses to rest and pushes the last remaining piece off with his hind pair of legs. When he is finished he begins to inspect his surroundings almost immediately, crawling around and propping himself up on his hind legs to make himself taller. You have a feeling you won’t have to worry about him very much. 

The second of your grubs is the spitting image of Imperial Astronomauler Sunblaze, who tried to antagonize you by boasting of her accomplishments as one of the chief navigational scientists for the Empress’s new ship- the one that evidently uses the Ψiioniic as its power source. Ψii is already experienced in navigating by the stars; why does he have any use for an imperial scientist? She seemed offended by the question and quickly lost you in math and technical jargon when you asked. You were far more interested in news of how your friend was doing, but this turned out to be another sore point because as a low ranking teal they never even let her on board the ship after it was built. Overall the interaction was frustrating enough on both sides to make for a satisfying pitch fling. Her grub puts it into a whole different light. Hatching one Descendant from your brood could have been passed off as unusual, a coincidence. Two is the start of a pattern. 

Surely there must be some kind of cross pollination? Perhaps in their personalities? But that doesn’t tell you anything. A grub whose appearance is close enough to be a Descendant is a Descendant regardless of personality. In fact from what you’ve heard their personalities tend to be completely different from their Ancestors after so many sweeps of recombination and dormancy within the Mother Grub’s brood pouch. Watching Sunblaze’s grub you find no trace of haughty self-importance, no sign that she is trying to make herself look bigger, no excess of nonsensical chatter. She grooms herself from the remains of nutritional fluid from the egg then curls up and promptly goes to sleep. Meanwhile Darkleer’s grub shows no trace of aloofness or uncertainty, investigating his hatchmates from the Mother Grub’s brood as companions instead. If anything you would describe him as curious. 

The next to hatch are descended from two of Darkleer’s blueblooded colleagues, Cullback and Fortress, who were in charge of crowd control during what didn’t quite turn out to be your public execution. Cullback and Fortress can’t stand each other but their two grubs are nigh inseparable from the start, one following the other and both constantly calling out to each other in a noisy stream of chirps. You hope their bond becomes a friendship that lasts into their childhood. With any luck they won’t have to live too far away from each other. 

It’s odd seeing a miniature version of Honorable Justice Accusing without the sharp formal robes and the tiny round spectacles. You have to admit you were proud of yourself hearing her read out the long list of your crimes against the empire. When she came to visit you complimented her on the sound of her voice; regal, precise and commanding, and pleasant to listen to. In turn she was far more respectful than you expected for someone who you didn’t know very well, grateful for her moment in the spotlight and enjoying the sound of your voice besides. You let her wring as much noise out of you as she wanted that day. That was fun. Her teal grub seems a lot like her in personality, very quiet and squeaking only when necessary. 

The Grand Highblood’s messy haired violet grub is the last to hatch, after the descendants of two feisty cerulean jail guards. His grub is very lazy, taking his sweet time even in the face of attacks by two other wrigglers from the Mother Grub’s brood. As he emerges from his shell he shrugs them off, pushes them away, then loses his patience and sends them galloping away in terror with a psychic attack. You’re not quite sure how you feel about that but at least he didn’t launch an unprovoked attack at the sight of them. Seeming to respond to your discomfort, he crawls up onto the small of your back and sprawls there with his little grub claws splayed in all directions. That itches a little but you like the attention. If you want to look at him you have to turn your body very slowly to keep from dislodging him from his perch. His eyes are half closed in contentment but he is alert, keeping watch instead of going to sleep. 

None of your grubs look remotely like you. The selfish part of you that isn’t terrified by the idea of having a Descendant condemned to your life forever by no fault of his own is disappointed in the lack of a little red ball of warmth to hold in your hands. 

You would rather keep watching your grubs than watching the jades sort through the others, but it’s hard to ignore completely. There’s a grub with such brittle horns they chipped on the way out of the shell; the sound of its crying is unbearable until Sharpeye spears it out of its misery with a squelch that makes you shudder. Businesslike and merciless, Gladfork culls another that’s struggling around in circles on one leg too many. As soon as Madshank and Casualty return from their hunting trip the other grubs have already started getting into fights over scraps of meat. 

Maybe the reason why yours haven’t is because they hatched so fat. Goodness, you still feel a bit pudgy yourself. The drones, fooled yet again by your hormones into thinking you were another Mother Grub, kept bringing you far more food than you could finish. You’re glad to see that their efforts paid off. 

Futility weighs and measures the new grubs and takes note of their identifying characteristics, while Ashprong checks them against their previous records. They become increasingly incredulous as they sort through yours. You feel anxious and defensive, resisting the useless, uncivilized urge to snap at them with your teeth as they manhandle your offspring. None of them are culled. You breathe out and let your shoulders relax. Blissfully unaware of the bullet she just dodged, Jailhive’s grub doesn’t let Futility put her down, clinging to the jade blood’s sleeve and begging for attention. Futility seems mildly annoyed. When she finally dislodges the little cerulean, the grub comes crawling back to nestle in between your horns with an offended squeak. 

Ashprong’s eyebrows shoot way up his forehead. “This can’t be right. Seven Descendants in one clutch? What the fuck?” 

“Let me see,” says Futility as she runs off to check the records again. “Huh, weird.” 

“Looks like it was all highbloods too,” leers Gladfork. “No hiding who sank their claws in you this sweep is there? How’d you enjoy your flogging? Heh heh.” 

Crude. Madshank and Casualty think it’s hilarious, Sharpeye rolls her eyes and Ashprong seems slightly uncomfortable. You level Gladfork with a cool stare. “Join me during Drone Season next sweep. Perhaps you will learn something.” 

Madshank and Casualty break into fresh howls of laughter, elbowing Gladfork in the ribs. 

“So you’re going to pay the most attention to your Makara wriggler right?” 

Oh, she asked for it. “Let me answer your question with another one that’s equally absurd. Your moirail is a seadweller and your matesprit has rust colored blood. Which one do you love more?” 

That fires up a really good argument, and _nobody runs away_. Arguing is your favorite pastime. You are quite pleased with yourself. 

Madshank’s delivers the uninspired closing statement “…Yeah well you have a grub on your head,” and that’s when you know that you’ve won. 

“So I do. That was an ad hominem attack, and not a very good one.” 

***

Pestilence: if only you could opt out of participating in this wriggler trial all over again. One would think that sweeps of exposure to large crowds would have given you more immunity to the diseases the grubs spread amongst themselves in endless circles. One would be wrong. Without the exceptional disease tolerance of a jade blood every pathogen becomes unreasonably virulent when you are surrounded, nestled against and blanketed by the young and untidy at all hours. 

Last sweep it was a little nuisance of a head cold that stuffed up your sinuses and made all the wrigglers fussy and miserable for a few days. This sweep’s hellish stomach bug has robbed you of what’s left of your dignity so thoroughly that you were forced to spend the last twelve shivering, heaving hours slumped over a repurposed bucket that will never be clean again. Now that you can just about manage to keep a sip of water down, you almost have enough energy left to care about the sour smelling mess your offspring have left all over you. You wrinkle your nose for a moment then let yourself collapse back onto the ground with a sigh. 

“Hot.” Ashprong jokes dryly, clad in gloves and an apron as he cleans up where the drones have missed. “Ugh, stop making this pale,” he adds when you close your eyes and chirp softly at the cool damp cloth he applies to your forehead. You smile. You are incorrigible. 

Hours later you awaken with a much clearer head and an appetite. Many of the wrigglers are less fortunate. 

Jailhive’s grub was too naïve, may she rest in peace. After a quick recovery, all she wanted to do was play. She didn’t anticipate a vicious mauling from a hatchmate in a highblood rage, the kind where submission is useless and rolling over to play dead is fatal. It hurt less than you expected it to, crooning and delicately scratching between her horns to comfort her as you watched her bleed out. At least you could give her more kindness than most other trolls receive in their final moments. You want to care, you want to cry, but after so many sweeps of watching your followers getting brutally, repeatedly slaughtered in masse, your think pan has chosen numbness over crushing depression out of self-preservation. All you can do is sigh and hold the others that much closer. 

Young Makara. Your own hatchling killed his sister and a handful of the Mother Grub’s brood. You always feared this could happen but now that it has you’re not even angry. You still love him. You’ve already forgiven him. It isn’t his fault; even with far more control over their emotions and a moirail to pacify them, adults from cerulean upward can still be prone to violent outbursts. None of us are above escaping from the pull of our basic instincts, not even you. 

He still has a stomachache and a fussy temper that your attempts at comfort cannot fix. He bites hard enough to draw blood when you try to pet along his back, then he half cheeps, half growls in complaint and curls up in the crook of your arm; adorable in spite of everything. 

***

Somewhere in the unmeasurable pitch black distance, a drop of water splashes from a stalactite into a burbling creek every few seconds. You breathe in. You breathe out. A squeakbeast’s call echoes off the walls of the caverns. Small wings flap over your head and disappear into the deep. The wrigglers are rustling faintly in their cocoons. There are footsteps coming from the direction of the cave entrance; one, two, hesitation, a cleared throat in an instantly recognizable, very deep voice, hesitation, a step back outward…

You open your eyes and smile at him. “Please come in.” 

“I. Yes. My apologies-”

“Darkleer darling, it’s alright, I wasn’t sleeping and I wouldn’t mind a visit from you even if I was.” You scoot backward until your chains allow you to sit up against the cavern wall. “Would you like to see your offspring? He’s in this pupa, the one in your color.” You pick it up in both hands and hold it out to him. “If you hold him up to the light you just might be able to make out the shape of his horns inside. He looks just like you.” 

“I…have a Descendant?” Darkleer accepts the pupa into his hands with the utmost care and reverence. The wide-eyed awe on his face is the most gratifying thing you’ve seen since you’ve arrived here. 

“Yes, he was the first to hatch, very strong and inquisitive. You can try talking to him if you like. They sleep a lot but he’s usually quiet even when he’s awake. I’ve only heard a few little sentences from him before he pupated but he understands a lot of words. Don’t worry, I haven’t been teaching him any coarse language.” 

“Goodness.” Darklear clears his throat again. He stares at the pupa for a few seconds, then, looking like he feels rather silly, he offers it a greeting. “Hello, little one. This is your Ancestor speaking. Have you decided what kind of lusus you would like when you hatch?” 

The pupa wobbles slightly in his hands. “I want a pony,” comes a muffled squeak from young Zahhak. 

“Very good, very good. Carry on.” He hands the pupa back to you as if he’s afraid he’s going to break it. 

The pupa squeaks, “Yes sir,” and you’re sure he didn’t learn that phrase from you. 

“Excuse me, I need a moment.” Darkleer starts getting a little emotional, removing his dark goggles to rub at his eyes, and he turns abashedly away as you put the pupa back down beside you. 

“Would you like a hug?” 

“No, no, it’s quite alright.” 

“Okay, if you’re sure.” 

“Well, perhaps a little…”

You rearrange the pupas around you so that they are within reach but out of the way and welcome him into your lap with metaphorical open arms. The shackles still allow you to loop your arms over his horns and pull him closer as he settles against you, exhaling with shuddering breaths. You rumble happily until you feel him relax. 

“This was not the main purpose of my visit,” Darkleer informs you in a tone that’s just shy of admonishing you for distracting him. 

“Oh?” 

“I come bearing news. How much do you know about what was to become of your Disciple and your lusus?” 

“Nothing. Tell me everything. Are they alive?” You clutch at him and sit up straighter, hanging on to every small hint of emotion on his face. 

“They were sentenced to have their signs removed and sold into slavery to a highblood sea captain.” He leans in to whisper in your ear and his voice drops so low it would not even reach the nearest pupa. “I… may have been deliberately careless about ensuring that their bonds were secure. Last time I returned to the docks in search of the latest rumors I heard that their vessel had been captured by a psychic corsair known as Spinneret Mindfang, but her powers were reportedly not strong enough to keep the entire crew in check at the same time and they managed to escape in the ensuing chaos. They have stolen another ship and are lying low somewhere on the open sea until interest in the bounties on their recapture dies down. That is all.” 

Your voice hitches. “Thank you, thank you, you beautiful person.” 

“It was the least I could do. I-”

You will hear none of it. You pull him toward you with a needy whimper and kiss him, your tears of joy smearing across his cheeks. Disappointingly, he pulls away just as it begins to get nice and heated and your hands have sneaked downward to grab his ass. 

“Not in front of the grubs, Signless. I am shocked at you.” 

You have to chuckle at how blue in the face he becomes. You tease him with one last affectionate grope before unhanding him. “Oh Darkleer, you are such a prude. Not one of them will ever see or remember.” 


	3. Chapter 3- Now with art

You have so many toddler hugs and kisses goodbye, such sweet little vicious beasts with their pudgy hands and nubby claws and the utter seriousness in their eyes. You are so proud of them. You might have a wistful tear or two in your eyes. The jades unanimously decide that you are a disgusting sap, and they’re right. 

“Don’t you ever get attached to them?” 

“Hah!” 

“No.” 

“Ugh, are you serious? All they do is eat and shit everywhere!” 

“Nope.” 

“Oh come now, honestly?” Obviously at _least_ one of them is lying and they don’t want to admit it. 

“It’s just a job.” 

“Be practical. Any one of them could be cullbait tomorrow.” 

“That is offensive and I am offended.” 

“You can go fuck yourself, mutant.” 

“Go? Gladfork darling, I love how you wish it were that easy to get rid of me.” You flutter your eyelashes at her and grin. 

***

God, you’re in such a good mood. You welcome the familiar heat in your nook, already envisioning yourself arching your hips up to meet your first visitor. 

Oh. Oh my. Visitors, plural, does not begin to capture the intimidating crowd of muscle pouring shoulder to shoulder across the threshold of your cave, each troll jostling for space with their elbows. How many subjuggulators make a squadron? You remember the flash from the Grand Highblood’s little cell phone camera and you blush deeply. There are a hundred pairs of indigo eyes leering at you. Your nook throbs. 

“Think this tiny red motherfucker can handle all of us?” 

“Yes _please_ ,” you blurt without thinking. This is not the time for thinking. Sweet Gl’bgolyb, if their bulges are anywhere near his size… 

The crowd erupts into hearty laughter, closing ranks around you until you are engulfed. Their pheromones are absolutely stifling. There are eyes investigating every part of you, hands bunching into fists in your hair, clawtips tracing ghostly patterns along the vulnerable flesh of your neck, your collarbone, your shoulders. All you want to do is tip your head back and purr. 

“Hah! You’ve got globes.” 

“Are you invertebrothers seeing this?” 

“Greedy little bucket guzzler. Just like the big boss said.” 

“Look at those eyes. Round as a motherfuckin wheel.” 

All their words are getting lost somewhere between your ears and your think pan. Someone with sharp corkscrew horns leans in on all fours, her stray deadlocks spilling across your cheek, and begins licking at the base of your left horn. You are sharply aware of cool, bare skin and the touch of a rumble sphere against your arm. Her low voice raises all the hairs at the back of your neck, felt more than heard. “Scared, motherfucker?” 

You moan, and you’re not even that sensitive there. 

Her lips curl into a smile against your skin. “I think you ain’t loud enough.” 

Her reinforcements agree. The dreadlocked troll is quickly joined by another to bracket you on either side. They mirror each other’s movements, tongues circling over opposite hornbeds and fingers digging into your grub scars. A third troll with short curls strips and straddles you, dipping a finger into the slit along the soft underside of your sheath. Nothing is supposed to go _inside_ there! You gasp through your teeth. Your nook clenches. Is she really that impatient to get at your bulge? Because oh god is it ever working. Your bulge is tentatively beginning to emerge, trying to curl around her fingers at the tip. She grabs hold of the tip, rolls it between her thumb and forefinger and _pulls_. It doesn’t take much force to coax your bulge out faster than it was ready to go on its own, both uncomfortable and intensely arousing. 

The farther up you wind around her arm, the farther you fall into her trap. Her other hand dives right back between your legs, sliding down the base of your bulge to work two fingers into the gap it left behind in your sheath. Three fingers. Four. You can no longer decide how dangerously close this is getting to unwanted territory. Then her considerably larger bulge twines around yours as it emerges from her sheath and the tip worms right into your bulgeslit. Oh no, oh no, this is never going to work, she’ll never _fit_!

Your sheath is fighting the troll with short curls on every stroke, failing to force her out as she incrementally wedges her way in deeper and deeper. It’s so tight it _hurts_. So wrong! So good! Her bulge is lighting up so many gorgeous nerve clusters on your bulge that have never been touched before. Who knew your ridges went on so impossibly deep? Why wasn’t this your idea? Her whole body shudders as she ruts her hips up flush with yours and you’re so close, you’ll never last a minute like this. She cries out a little every time you clench, but that’s nothing compared to the way she’s making you keen. 

As if that wasn’t intense enough, the trolls at your sides are spreading your seedflap apart in two different directions with their bulges. Both try to force their way in at once and they’ll never fit like this either; their knobs and ridges keep tangling against each other and getting caught halfway up your nook walls. Half bursting, half untouched, your nook can’t decide whether to push or pull. 

An unspoken agreement is reached. Untangling their bulges, the dreadlocked troll and the troll on your right begin to shift back and forth in opposite directions, one plowing deeper as the other retreats. There are too many rhythms to follow. You cry out in time with neither. For once no one has to go near your gene sphincter and you’re gushing genetic material over all three of them. Your nook tightens and sucks hard, making both trolls in your nook climax at once. The incoming flood feels so good it makes your toes curl. Most of it ends up overflowing and pooling between your legs. Bucket? Hopeless. You’re already a mess anyway, so you simply release the rest with a giddy sigh. 

Oh no, oh please, you weren’t ready for the two of them to pull away, let alone the one in your sheath. The sudden absence of their touch makes you whimper. 

“Plenty more where that came from, nubby,” croons the short haired troll as she repositions herself to align the tip of her bulge with your nook. She plows into you hard, once, twice, and she releases another jet directly into your gene bladder – just enough stimulation to make your seed flap protest at her subsequent retreat back into the crowd. 

She’s right, of course. A fourth troll quickly takes her place. His thick horns arc upward and back with a small loop at the ends. You chirp and squirm happily as he manhandles both your legs over his shoulders with his large, meaty hands. This one folds you up and drives in to the hilt. 

“Swirl your bulge. I need- Ah! More! Just like that!” Forget how awkward this position is to hold; he has your gene sphincter forced wide open around his girth exactly the way you like it, pressing and rolling in circles that make you wish you knew whose name to scream. Clenching around him over and over again, you come so hard you barely even feel the current of his excess slurry pouring out of you. You only realize you’ve been shouting demands at a subjuggulator easily twice your size after the temporary blindness of your second orgasm has worn off. You look around, blinking blearily. Nobody is offended? Maybe they realize you’re just as likely to beg in any given second. The meaty troll rolls off of you, leaving you sprawled comfortably in a growing puddle of cooling genetic fluid. This is getting rather absurd and you don’t mind at all. 

You cry out again as a troll with straight, deeply grooved horns rolls you over onto your stomach to shove into your sheath from behind. It’s easier to get used to the second time around when you’re already so loose and relaxed, but it’s going to be _so hard_ to ignore how hotly it aches. Then another troll crawls in underneath you to bury her bulge deep in your nook – Yes! Just the counterpoint you were dying for. You cling. You arch into her with all the strength in your hips until your mouth hangs open around your ragged breaths. It takes you by surprise when they both release material into your nook one after another so soon when this time your nook is only halfway there. You are a snarling, begging mess. “Hey I wasn’t finished! Don’t stop! You can’t stop now!” 

Good god can he go any _slower_? The seventh troll has to do a bit of gymnastics to fit in between the constraints of your chains. You can barely keep from squirming with impatience. Once he’s right where he wants to be, he reclines against the wall, grabs you by the horns and pulls your head into his lap, guiding your mouth onto his seedflap. You hate feeling so disappointingly empty, but you’ll still make the most of an ass within groping range of your shackled hands and a nook to make out with. 

While you’re busy making obscene slurping noises and growling, the eighth troll approaches you from behind, grabs you by the hips, pulls you up onto your knees and slams into you like she’s trying to tear your nook walls apart. Finally! You give back as good as you get and clench around her as if she’s threatening to escape. Judging by the way his hands clench around your horns, the one in front of you clearly appreciates the escalation of your garbled trills. 

Then the one behind you gets tangled in a really good spot along the relatively untouched valleys of your nook ridges in a way that makes you screech. In response the other mashes your face against him so tightly you can’t breathe. You panic. You struggle to pull away, whimpering with increasing distress. The troll behind you thrashes harder, and you feel like you might literally drown. Her spurt of genetic material sends you hurtling dizzily over the edge right as the troll in front of you gushes purple all over your face and hair. Your globes have no material left to give. He disentangles himself from your chains to slide into your nook and smear a cursory blob of his genetic material along the walls of your gene bladder. You suck in great heaving lungfuls of air until you can finally relax. Then you try to wipe most of the gunk out of your eyes with your arm. Lovely. You couldn’t get any filthier if you rolled in it. 

A ninth troll scoops you up, flips you onto your back and slides in underneath to access your nook from behind, while the tenth drapes herself over your body, guiding your bulge into her nook. Their sinewy arms are wrapped around the small of your back and your abdomen, an intimate and reassuring counterpoint to the hot tenderness beginning to take shape in your nook. She rides you with jarring force, grinding you into her partner. You’re glad you don’t have to move much when you’re feeling so utterly boneless. You concentrate on whipping your bulge across as many contours of her nook as you can reach. 

She’s so much taller than you that you can’t get at her gene sphincter; as the troll on top of you is getting close and you can’t quite push her over the edge, the troll underneath pulls out of your nook and shoves his bulge in beside yours to finish the job. Oh wow that’s _tight_. Every clench from her nook makes you moan. You’re trying to work both of them over at once and you think it’s working. She burrows frantically into your nook with her bulge to get at your gene bladder, trilling with pleasure through her release. You coil tighter around her partner’s bulge, rutting up and down against him. Ooh he must like that. His hips arch in time with your rhythm. Come on… just a little more… He can hardly wait for her to move out of the way before lunging into you with desperately burning hunger, arms around your back going so tight they squeeze a breath out of your lungs. You gasp as he fills you up all over again. 

They weren’t even close to getting you off a fourth time, but you’re more than okay with that. Your hormones are finally slowing down. You cast a tired glance at the nearest trolls in the crowd; at some point while watching you several subjuggulators decided they cannot possibly wait for their turn any longer and are frantically stroking themselves and each other to completion. You can’t help feeling smug at the sight of them. Disgusting mutant or hot piece of ass? Evidence seems to point to the latter. Ah, shallow external validation. Sometimes one’s soul needs a little junk food. You lay back in your filthy puddle and smile. 

As their genetic material mingles with the pool on the floor, the subjuggulators who were too impatient to wait come up and thrust into you by ones and twos to deliver their leftovers into your nook. Five? Ten? Shivering with pleasure, you close your eyes and let yourself lose count. You clench your nook around each bulge and suck upward, just as eager to draw the fresh material up into the pockets of your gene bladder as you are to keep each troll captive for a little longer. 

That was a bit of a breather. The next two trolls who sandwich you between them most definitely aren’t. Your sheath is _so sore_ the third time around, to say nothing about the mincemeat that used to be your nook. But your gene sphincter. God yes, you just can’t get enough! For one more round at least…

Just as you’re beginning to worry about how much more you can take, it becomes apparent that you’ve all forgotten something more important. The Mother Grub and the Imperial Drones have been separated by a subjuggulator induced traffic snarl for more than an hour and they refuse to put up with it any longer. The buckets are on the ground. The culling forks are out. Some of the more rational subjuggulators at the mouth of the cave are trying to clear the fuck out of the way but most of them are picking up their clubs to fight back. Total chaos erupts. 

_Oh for the love of fuck._ You refuse to stand for this utter nonsense, not now, not ever, not even in the middle of getting pailed senseless. Riding a surge of adrenaline, you half kick, half shove the distracted troll that was in your sheath off you so you can sit up and snarl over all of them at the top of your lungs. And you have a _very good_ pair of lungs. “STOP IT! EVERYBODY STOP! There is absolutely NO REASON to get violent when you could just let the Drones do their jobs and everybody can move on with their lives! Calm yourselves this instant. So help me god, I will pap every one of you if necessary!” 

Dead silence. Every subjuggulator you can see freezes in their tracks and locks their bloodshot eyes on you like they’re ready to flay you alive. If there’s one thing a subjuggulator hates, it’s being told what to do by a casteless (quadrant-blurring) mutant. Too fucking bad, because they know you’re right and you’re not going to take it back. Your shackles get in the way of folding your arms across your chest. You glare back at them with a mixture of outrage and a dash of pale flirting (the offer to pap still stands). Then the Mother Grub sidles up to you, starts daintily siphoning up the slurry off your face and it really ruins the effect. 

The tension shatters. All it takes is for one subjuggulator to burst out laughing and it spreads to the rest like wildfire. You deflate with a heavy sigh. That could have ended in disaster. Thank god no one was seriously hurt. Oh very well, if you must suffer through another round of cell phone snapshots you may as well have fun with it. Maybe if you blow a few kisses into the camera for the Grand Highblood he will come visit you again next sweep. “Send Mister Makara my regards.” 

The troll you’ve been sitting on all this time suddenly gives you a thrashing reminder that he is still globes deep inside you. You arch into him with a wide-eyed gasp, blindsided by how attractive you find the deep, mischievous rumble of his belly laugh. One blink later the troll you pushed off earlier has you flattened against the one in your nook while driving back into your sheath with the force of punishment. His teeth sink into your shoulder. You wrap your legs around him and scream. You meant to say sorry for pushing him off before getting back into this, but now half your garbled apology is coming out as pleading and praise. _Something_ must be getting across, because it certainly seems to encourage him. He barely waits for the one in your nook to finish with you before taking his place and pounding your gene sphincter raw. “Pail me! Pail me! Pail me!” You lose a few seconds of awareness as your eyes roll back in your head. “Oh…” The Mother Grub takes her latest bucket load of clean up duty in stride. 

When the next troll takes her place in your nook, it _burns_. This is going to be the one that kills you. Your voice has gone hoarse. You throw your shackled wrists over your eyes with a soft wail. She tries fondling your globes, your sheath, your horns; the last dying flutter left in your nook doesn’t seem to be enough for her. 

“You broke him, bro. Told you he can’t handle it.” 

“I _really_ want to,” you sob, “but I’m so tired.” 

Another pushes into her nook from behind and grabs her by the hips. “He ain’t broken. Here, follow my lead.” 

With guidance from her colleague, she starts to move in and out at such an excruciatingly slow pace you could count every individual knob on her bulge. You shudder and melt. Sure enough, somewhere in all the pressure and friction, underneath the hot throbbing pain of a nook that’s had enough, there’s still a spark of pleasure incrementally blooming back to life. Just how strong are your heat hormones anyway? They could have fetched fortune on the black market. You let out a low, buzzing groan from deep inside your rumble spheres. Your nook muscles are pulsing back to life. 

“See?” 

“Miracles.” 

“I think I have to agree,” you chime in faintly. She gives your ass an affectionate groping. 

***

It’s been _hours_. All your orgasms are blurring together into one gently rising and falling tide. Pain has come to equilibrium with pleasure, neither varying significantly in intensity. Ever since the subjuggulators gave up on expecting you to reciprocate, lying here and taking it has become as easy as breathing. You feel warm, heavy, cotton-headed and profoundly content. Your throat is parched and sore. Your stomach is rumbling. You can barely keep your eyes open. 

You drift in and out of a light sleep as the subjuggulator troupe begins to scatter to hunt down something to eat. Someone is trying to lift you into a sitting position. You groan in protest until you feel a glass of cold water being pressed to your lips. Sweet ambrosia of the gods! You’ll take five. 

The troll who now has your undivided attention is an older, shorter subjuggulator with a chipped horn and a landscape of scars where there used to be an eye. That she is willingly taking time out of her own lunch hour to actually bring you four more glasses of water goes straight to your pity gland. Then, heedless of the sticky traces of slurry the drones haven’t managed to clean up yet, she sits down and shares the rations she brought with her – a large meal for someone with a slowing metabolism. It’s the first cooked meal you’ve had since the day you were captured. 

“I love you.” 

She shrugs modestly. “A brother’s gotta keep up his strength.” 

You insist. You loop your chains over her horns and pull her into a kiss. She humors you for a moment, but then she lays you back down on the cave floor and begins to walk away. You follow her with your eyes, radiating disappointment. 

“Later. Just get your nap on.” 

“At least tell me your name?” 

“Terroritualist Mekmat, ceremonial keeper of the Limeblood Messiah.” 

You sit bolt upright, eyes blown wide. “Excuse me, _lime_?” Moments ago you were 100% sure you wanted to steer as far away as possible from the Mirthful Messiahs and any knowledge thereof, but that was before this unsettling off-spectrum word nugget started making you upset. How are you supposed to go to sleep now? 

It’s only after she returns to your side with long, commanding strides that you realize she has eyes that can bore into your soul. The weight of her hooded gaze has you struggling to stifle a threat response. How is it that she feels so much closer to you than when you physically had your arms around her? 

“In the beginning times, under the blindness of a dying sun, the two Messiah hatched, sharing the body of a serpent. Ain’t no brother without a sister. 

“Eyes of scarlet. He surveys the barren world around him and finds it lacking. Small. Boring. Ain’t nobody to conquer. He wants it all to hisself and more. 

“Eyes of chartreuse. She surveys the barren world around her and finds it lacking. Large. Gaping. Ain’t nobody to talk to. She wants someone to share with and more. 

“And so they search, and find little more than each other. One must kill the other to survive. 

“He wins; the word of the victor writes the world. We learn strength and ruthlessness. We rely on no one. We trust no one. 

“She fights to the death and beyond, her ghost threatening ruin ever still. We learn persistence, endurance, vigilance, hope against all odds. The city is built upon her bones. 

“We learn balance. Ain’t a word of wicked truth what can be spoken without blasphemy to tear asunder. Ain’t no renewal without destruction. Ain’t an army what can survive with every brother fighting only for hisself. Ain’t a wriggler what can be hatched without love and hate.” 

Mikmat’s features soften, and she pushes you back into a lying position with a hand on your forehead. You can’t stop staring at her. “My brother, I’ll show them all you got the blood of one god and the soul of another. You kept our claws sharp. You gave us an enemy that we may keep from fighting amongst ourselves. It’s a pity the battle is won.” 

Then she meticulously cleans you up with a washcloth and begins to paint serpentine patterns in white and grey from your face down to your torso, starting with a spiral on each cheek. It’s surprisingly soothing, considering that you’re not entirely sure you agreed to this. Somewhere in the middle you give up the fight and doze off. 

***

Huh? They let you sleep in? How late is it? Your head feels fuzzy. You stretch and give a great yawn. Where’s Mikmat? You seek her out in the crowd and catch a brief glimpse of a smile. 

There’s something noticeably different about how the subjuggulator troupe treats you after that. It’s hard to put your finger on it over the constant distracting ache of your nook until someone _else_ stops and brings you a glass of water- to make you produce more slurry of course. Then a few runs later there’s another lull and they let the Mother Grub clean you up on the pretense that you were getting too disgusting, or the drones were getting too restless, or your paint needs a touch-up. (It doesn’t. The subjuggulators are absolute wizards at getting it not to smear.) This pattern repeats itself. You can hardly believe your senses. Mikmat catches your eye and winks. You make hopeless moon eyes at her. Okay. Holy shit. You are really, _really_ into this. Your entire predawn is flavored with anticipation and a touch of care. 

That nap was a good idea, because you’re well into the morning before the troupe finally settles down to sleep around you in rows and heaps. You’ve maybe gotten through about half of them, but considering how many have barely been able to contain themselves from butting in line for seconds, this could easily last through the entirety of Drone Season and all those hungry eyes still won’t be satisfied. You beckon anyone and everyone closer until you end up with arms looped around your waist from behind, a chin resting on your shoulder, someone’s soft rumble spheres to use as a pillow, and Mikmat’s body looped through your shackles so you can snuggle her, grinning like a naughty child. This is a definite improvement. She has dibs on you first thing in the evening, but the other two who so willingly lend themselves to cuddles are also high up on your list of priorities. You take a moment to memorize their features before dropping off into a well-deserved sleep. 

Mikmat is the first one awake, patiently waiting until you show signs of stirring before leaning in to suck on your earlobe. You are so wet for her. It’s hard to extricate yourself from the others without waking anyone, harder still to keep quiet as she works your nook over sweet and slow. Her mouth closes over yours as if trying to swallow up all the little whimpers escaping from your throat. You could make out with her for hours. If only your shackles didn’t get in the way of getting your hands all over her; the best you can manage like this is a tight hug full of metal. 

All the knobs of her thick bulge tip rasp over your seedflap on the way in and out and god yes, there, you can’t help yourself, you’ve never had an inside voice in your whole life. She holds down your hips to keep your movements under her control. The insistent press of her lips does little to muffle the sound of your cries as her slow, relentless pace becomes a form of gentle torture. She is building you up to a big one. You’re going to shatter into a million pieces and beg for more. 

In the end it’s neither your moans nor your movements that wake up all the nearest trolls around you. It’s the wetness of your slurry. Oops. 

***

You’re lying on your back with your shackled hands folded over your stomach, looking rather the worse for wear and feeling delightfully sated, when it hits you – you can _afford_ to take all week to sleep this season off. What your imprisonment lacks in freedom it makes up for with everything you wish you had in a life on the run - food, shelter, more free time than you know what to do with, and yes, let’s be honest with ourselves, the sex. No, really. No one else can appreciate how liberating it feels to be able to surrender to the demands of your body without the crippling anxiety over where to find your next meal and a safe place to lay your eggs. In a way you’re forced to contribute to the gene pool just like everybody else. Almost as if… not even you would dare to say it aloud… you have the _right_ to exist here. Yes, you miss your old friends dearly and you have no way to go and see them. Yes, it’s one tiny space you can’t even stand up in and you can never leave, but you can stay here as long as you like _without fear of persecution_. And you thought your attempt at revolution was a crushing failure. 

Ashprong jumps to an amusing height when he catches sight of your body paint. Does grinning make it worse? Probably. “Welcome back.” 

“What the _fuck_ , that’s terrifying. Do I even _want_ to know?” 

Indeed, strange things happen to you sometimes. “Probably not, but since you asked, it’s reasonable to assume I’m carrying more eggs than last sweep.” 

“You’re disgusting.” 

You very pointedly purr louder and pretend you didn’t hear him. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Signless is weirdly attractive in clown paint? I have a problem.


End file.
